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The Myth of an Affirmative-Action President – Ta-Nehisi Coates – The Atlantic

But there’s also something else–the frame of skepticism is, as always, framed around Obama not around Romney. No one wonders what advantages accrued to Mitt Romney, a man who spent his early life ensconced in the perserve of malignant and absolutist Affirmative Action that was metropolitan Detroit. Romney’s Detroit (like most of the country) prohibited black people from the best jobs, the best schools, the best neighborhoods, and the best of everything else. The exclusive Detroit Golf Club, a short walk from one of Romney’s childhood homes, didn’t integrate until 1986. No one is skeptical of Mitt Romney because of the broader systemic advantages he enjoyed, advantages erected largely to ensure that this country would ever be run by men who looked like him.This kind of skepticism–racism at its most common–is the air. It surrounds us, and upon this willful ignorance, Americans demand proof of Barack Obama’s existence. The better of us attempt to contest such demands with facts. But the contest, itself, indulges racism. To truly get to the meat of thing we must understand why some questions are asked, and some are not.